Ranking: What is Certification and what does it do for me?

Solution

Note: Currently this feature requires the commercial versions of Sandra (i.e. is not present in the Lite version). We hope to bring it to this version in the future.

Certification is a new feature in Sandra 2012 that uses the submitted results to work out whether your score is valid and how it compares to other submitted scores for the device/computer you are testing on the same platform (e.g. OS type, OS version, etc.)

By aggregating the scores submitted for each device and performing statistical analysis (e.g. computing mean/average, standard deviation, etc.) we can use statistical tools (e.g. normal distribution, T-distribution, etc.) to work out whether the score is within the expected range (confidence intervals) of scores obtained by other users.

This shows not only whether the score is above/below average but whether the distance from average is significant; based on the quality of scores (variability of samples) this may or may not be expected.

Without such analysis it is not always obvious whether the score obtained is valid: no test (benchmark) will yield the same score every time (sample result) when testing the same device even under a constant environment. Statistical analysis is what allows us to work such things out.

By enabling the Ranker and submitting results you are helping yourself and the Sandra community.